The present disclosure relates generally to HVAC plants, and more particularly to system identification for controlling HVAC equipment. System identification refers to the determination of a model of a system (here, a building served by an HVAC equipment) that can be used to control the HVAC equipment, for example based on a model predictive control algorithm. Because the physical phenomena that govern such systems are often complex, nonlinear, and poorly understood, system identification requires the determination of model parameters based on measured and recorded data from the real system in order to generate an accurate predictive model.